As of 5/1/10
In terms of using technologies, you don't have to be the expert. It's ok to admit that you are learning right along with the students. That's to be expected (and should be encouraged) these days. But you must look for ways to integrate those technologies that your students enjoy using -- whether you know much about them or not. Look for examples of how such technologies are being used to achieve the same learning goals/objectives that you have in your class(es). Know, too, that the instructional technologists can't keep up and can't be experts in all things tech-related. So approach these tech-specialists with confidence, but also with humility.
Invite students or others to team-teach certain assignments or topics.
If you are using a course management system, put yourself in your student's shoes -- not just for your course, but for all of their courses. Whose back is the monkey on in terms of trying to figure out such things as: where the syllabus is, where the assignments are kept, how the assignments are to be submitted, or under which heading an article might be stored, etc. Strive for consistency and ease-of-use.
Consider the use of digital storytelling (resources here and here) whereby students create and present their content/media.
Be good to the instructional designers and instructional technologists that you know. You'll need them more and more in order to engage your students.
Be willing to change and to try new ways of doing things. This is especially true with mobile computing and the ability to deliver educational materials in a mobile fashion.
...to see which ones might be promising for your school (district) to implement.
Deliver the same content in as many different formats as you can possibly afford to do -- i.e. audio, video, text, graphics, animations, simulations.
Give students more control -- free up the navigation, allow pausing/rewinding/fast-forwarding/skipping ahead or going back.
Help instructional design theories and practices to continue to develop in this 21st century
Be willing to change and to try new ways of doing things. This is especially true with mobile computing and the ability to deliver educational materials in a mobile fashion.
Try to integrate technologies that are relevant throughout K-12, secondary, post-secondary, and corporate worlds. Some examples (as of 2010) include: email, word processing, spreadsheets, presentation software, web-based videoconferencing, and content management systems.
Help integrate web-based collaboration tools into the classrooms -- such as wikis and blogs.
Help integrate web-based videoconferencing tools into the classrooms (see Videoconferencing Out on a Lim) Use such technologies for guest speakers, virtual field trips, bringing in guest speakers, and for recording/showing the world what you are working on.
Look at how you can create engaging, interactive, participatory, hybrid-based learning environments. See my vision of a future smart classroom -- here and here -- as an illustration of what I'm talking about. In doing so, try to enable class to flow uninterrupted -- allowing students to queue up their media and display/play it for the class without having to break the flow of the class.
Try to move the technology into the background -- make it transparent and extremely easy-to-use (remembering that "easy is hard")
Be willing to change and to try new ways of doing things.
Keep these trends on your radar:
- Developing your own learning ecosystems
- Rising student expectations & power
- Keeping students engaged & motivated
- The move towards using more teams of specialists to create educational content
- Learning Agents, 1:1 computing, Personalized Learning Environments (PLE's), Customized learning
- Mobile learning
- Global learning
- Participatory learning; students more in control of their learning
- Digital storytelling
- Cloud computing / software as a service
- The extent to which Google's applications and offerings will make their way into the classroom
- The all-encompassing communications & computing device; convergence
- Open/collaborative teaching & learning
- The move towards developing consortiums & pooling resources
- Nanotechnology
- Cross-disciplinary assignments & learning
- Multimedia -- providing students with the same content but in 4-5 different ways; let them select what works for them
- Educational games/serious games
- Social networking/ learning -- Web 2.0-related items; including the growth of blogs, wikis, Twitter, other
- Multi-touch interfaces -- especially within Smart Classrooms
- The semantic, real-time web
- Virtual worlds / 3D
- The developing WebOS
- Legislation requiring students take at least one 100%-online class to graduate (first from high school, then from college)
- The move towards Voice-Over-IP (VOIP)-based applications & services, often bundled in with technologies such as instant messaging, presence, desktop sharing, whiteboarding, and audio/video conferencing
- Whether Learning / Course Management Systems continue to be integral or not
- Whether Moodle and other open-source systems will continue to gain market share
Build large communications-related pipes -- as the amount of multimedia-related data continues to increase.
Be willing to change and to try new ways of doing things. This is especially true with mobile computing and the ability to deliver educational materials in a mobile fashion.
- Fund the creation of engaging, professionally-done, team-created, multimedia-based, interactive content and leverage the power of the Internet to make these educational materials freely available throughout your nation and even the world
- Support the efforts of those institutions who are trying to bring positive innovation to education. Reward such institutions with the funding necessary to create models/examples of best practices.
Be willing to change and to try new ways of doing things.
Move towards making it policy that ALL students must take at least one 100%-online course. Michigan was the first state to institute this policy and others are beginning to follow this example.
Strongly support the efforts of teachers who are trying to be innovative -- via reduced teaching assignments, $$, enhanced facilities or software/hardware, etc.